


Slow Dance

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Talk about a niche ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 18:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10724634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: Right after the big MTMTE ending fight/start of LL.  Call this 'had a lousy weekend and wanted to write something entirely shallow and self-indulgent and you can't stop me'.





	Slow Dance

The music was like nothing Velocity had ever heard--bright, spangly melodies, and a rhythm that felt like a kind of pulsing fuel line.  Music in Caminus was more,well, ethereal, regal. It made your spark swell--but this music made her want to move. 

 

And she wasn’t the only one, if the rest of the room was any judge: mechs were gyrating and dancing.  She’d been too shy to dance, before, when Firestar was with them, but now, well, something was different. Maybe it was that sort of freedom from people who thought they knew who you were and held you to it. Or maybe it was her own release after all they’d been through--a few short hours ago, death seemed imminent, that DJD and those armies of angry mechs on the screen filling her with a kind of terror she had to work to block out so she could concentrate on her job. She’d felt a sort of sickish relief every time a mech stepped into the impromptu medibay, grateful that they at least gave her brain module something else to do other than swell with panic.  

 

But that was all over, for better or worse, and most of them had survived, and most of the survivors seemed just as eager to do something to celebrate the sheer fact of still being alive, still being functional enough to drink a little too much and do embarrassing dance moves. 

 

At least, that’s what Velocity was doing, so she figured that’s what was in everyone’s head.  And she didn’t want to think any deeper than that, laughing as someone took her hand, raising it over her head so she could twirl under their joined hands and then continued to twirl away from him, feeling the music catch in her joints, her footplates tapping on the floor, until

  
WHAM. 

 

Right into the broad burnished chassis plating of Megatron himself.  

  
Her laugh died with a squeak, her faceplates falling into alarm. “I’m sorry,” she blurted, all the awkwardness she’d been trying to push away collapsing on top of her. 

 

“No need,” the mech said, and she could feel the voice vibrate under her fingertips which she still--oops!--had on his chassis.  

 

She snatched her hand back, as though it scalded. “I just mean, you must think we’re awful for celebrating when...your friend….” She couldn’t finish the sentence--she hadn’t known Ravage as a mech, but even she was haunted by the memory of his broken body.  Whoever he had been, he hadn’t deserved a death like that.  She couldn’t think of anyone who might.  

 

Megatron’s head tilted, for a moment, as though he was seeing a whole horizon over her head. “I know the urge to enforce the presence of life in the face of sorrow and death. Some might consider it a defiance.” 

 

She nodded. It felt like a defiance, an insistence in the face of fate.  His gaze drifted down to her face, brows under the heavy helm knitting thoughtfully, before he leaned forward.  

 

“I may have a favor to ask of you,” he said, “in that vein.”

 

She wasn’t quite sure what he could possibly mean. “Of course.” They were a team, weren’t they? And wasn’t the whole point of this celebration to prove that they were all on the same side--the side that had won, and lost so much.  

 

He seemed to read something in her face that decided him. A moment later, he leaned forward, bending close to whisper something in her audio. 

  
***

 

Drift sat across from Ratchet, in a booth on the side of the dance floor. The rainbow of lights gleaming off polished armor and the sharper glinting off scratches to the undermetal, seemed to swirl and wash over them like waves on a shore. He looked up, catching (or trying to) Ratchet’s optics. “Great music,” he said, tentatively.  There was something between them, lately. On the ship, on the trip back, they’d been fine. Great. Intimate, even.  But since they’d come back, Drift couldn’t help but feel something, well, weird.  

 

“I guess,” Ratchet said, noncommittally, hiding any need for a facial expression in a sip from his drink. “Not really a connoisseur of music.” 

 

“Me neither,” Drift said, quickly. Probably a little too quickly, he thought, trying to spackle over any sort of embarrassment Ratchet might feel. But it felt like a failure, like he was lunging out to catch a ball that dropped between his fingers. 

 

He was saved from making another stumbling play at connection by a flash of bright teal. The new medic, he thought, one of the ones from Caminus. “Velocity,” he said, in that tone that said that he, at least, was pleased that he’d remembered her name.  

 

“I was, uh, wondering if you wanted to, uh, dance.”  The femme’s ankles twisted over each other, nervously.  

 

He looked over at Ratchet, even as the medic started talking, answering for him. “Of course he would.”  

 

“You sure?” Drift said, just at the same time that Velocity was asking him, “Are you sure?” A moment of awkwardness among them, and then Drift answered, with a stern nod, “Yeah Yes, I would like to dance,” he said, adding half a beat later, “With you.”  

 

Oh! She had no idea why those last two words would send such a sort of electric tremble around her spark, so it took a moment before she nodded, a smile broader than her usual spreading over her face as she reached her hands to help him rise from the table.  

 

Drift cast one last look over his shoulder at Ratchet, the other mech pulling his engex glass closer, almost hunching over it in the booth, before turning to give Velocity his full attention.   

 

“Am I…?” She didn’t know how to finish that--unwelcome? Interrupting something? Clueless? 

 

“You’re kind,” Drift said, taking her hand and drawing her closer to the dance floor. 

 

His hand was warm as it curled around her backstruts. She could feel--she’d swear it--each finger against her plating, as the music seemed to slow, wrapping around them in a swirl of notes and then she couldn’t think about anything else or anyone else on the dance floor, just him and the way all that power and strength seemed almost liquid now. He was still strong--she could feel it in the electromagnetic fuzz against her own field--but it moved fluidly.  She couldn’t help but think of the flashes she’d seen of him during the battle--that same power and grace--now moving with her, guiding her gently through the steps of the dance. Their bodies swayed together, and she found her foot plates tracing the dance easily, as though she’d known it all her life, guided by the gentle pressure of his hand and EM field against her.  

 

It made her self conscious, suddenly, the nearness of his frame against hers, the sudden awareness of proximity, of letting someone this close in.  

 

Velocity struggled to break that cocooning awkwardness. “You’re very good at this,” she murmured, her voice as shy as she felt. 

 

“I had a good teacher,” Drift said, easily, either immune to the tingling tension of their bodies, or hiding it far, far better than she was. 

 

“Where did you find time to learn?” Because from what she knew of him, he spent most of the war killing other mechs. Dance lessons didn’t seem to be on the combat agenda. Unless, well, maybe that was how sword-mechs learned? 

 

“Time was made for it,” he said, and his mouth twisted into a sad kind of smile, for half a klik, before he seemed to shake it off.  “The universe has a way of working things, doesn’t it?”

 

“I guess so,” she said, thinking, suddenly, of Megatron, of him whispering in her audio.  “Who taught you? Because,” her shoulder gyros shifted even as she moved another step in the dance. “”I’d love to be able to dance as well as you.” 

 

“Someone dear to me,” Drift said, “And gone, I’m afraid.”

 

“Oh.” Oh. She stepped in it again--and not in the graceful dance way.  Way to bring up death and loss...right in the middle of a night that should be devoted to celebrating life. First with Megatron, and now...this.  “I’m sorry.” 

 

“Don’t be.” A smile glimmered on Drift’s lip plates, like a ghost.  “He wouldn’t be.” 

 

“Are you sure?” Because why not make a clumsy situation worse by drilling down on it, right?  By the holy flame, Velocity.   Why did Nautica put up with you?  

 

“I’m sure.” The dance swung them into an arc again, almost dizzying, and she found herself clinging to him.  “You celebrate the lives of those who loved you by living, truly living.” 

 

It sounded like wisdom, something Nautica would say.  She couldn’t think of a good response, so she nodded. 

 

“It took me far too long to learn that myself,” Drift said, and his optics flicked back to the table where Ratchet sat. 

 

“I’ll try to learn it now,” she said, nodding earnestly.  Something sad and beautiful seemed to well up inside her chassis, like something blossoming against her spark, spreading something dizzying and wild through her fuel lines.  She leaned in, and there was a breathless, suspended moment between them, like they were sliding through time, and then their lip plates met, a surprise for both of them.  She heard a sound--one of them laughing, a husky, gratified chuckle, and she could feel his hands slide up her, tracing the arch of her spinal struts, fingers dancing along her kibble, and it felt warm and wild--exciting and cozy all at once.  

 

“I...don’t know how to do this,” she whispered, as their lips parted, and she felt the plushness of their energy fields pull apart. Any of this. With Drift. About Ratchet. About any real relationship. 

 

“That’s the fun of it,” Drift said, his blue optics glowing warm into hers. “We can all find out together.” And the blue optics slid over to Ratchet, still sitting in the booth where they’d left him, raising a glass toward them in a salute, and something almost like a grin ghosted on his face.  

 

Velocity nodded, giddily, and the world seemed suddenly even bigger and more exciting, all that celebration of life she’d been feeling all evening bubbling over. “I’d like that,” she said, and the tremble in her voice wasn’t fear as much as a sort of thrilled excitement, like a taut wire that extended down her body, trilling with energy.  

 

“And you can tell Megatron,” Drift said, pulling her in for another kiss, a gentle one, that started with a playful rub of their nasals, “to stop worrying about me.” 


End file.
